President Trump spoke with Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo in a wide-ranging interview that aired Wednesday morning, touching on topics like Syria and health care. In the segment, he told Bartiromo the back-story to the missile strike launched last week at a Syrian airfield in retaliation for a chemical attack that killed dozens of Syrian civilians, for which the White House has blamed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Trump was hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida while the mission was executed, and he told Bartiromo about the moment he informed Xi that he had sent 59 Tomahawk missiles hurtling toward Syria. "We had finished dinner. We're now having dessert. And we had the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you've ever seen," Trump says, noting "President Xi was enjoying it."
That's when Trump gave the military orders to execute the launch, he says, and informed his Chinese counterpart of the move. Watch him tell Bartiromo the whole story — and be corrected by her on which country the missiles targeted — below. Kimberly Alters
The Week
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